


Footage Not Found

by ryfkah



Series: Clone Wars campaign [4]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Post-Order 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:33:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22249465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/pseuds/ryfkah
Summary: Bash knows there's something wrong with him.
Series: Clone Wars campaign [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592614
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Footage Not Found

**Author's Note:**

> Fic for a Star Wars RPG campaign played between 2017-2018 that devastated all participants ([Lexie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexie/pseuds/Lexie), [sandrylene](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandrylene), [varadia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/varadia), [genarti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti) and GM [jothra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jothra)) enough that we all went on to write ... many thousands of words of fic about stray clones; this fic takes place after Order 66 left the party miraculously alive but all scattered, confused, and sad. For more context, check out Lexie's [character primer](https://wakeupnew.tumblr.com/post/190072369169/so-my-tabletop-group-played-a-clone-wars-campaign) and [Clone Wars campaign](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592614) series.

Okay. He hasn’t been thinking clearly in a while, it seems, but his brain seems to be back online, mostly. Okay. Where are we at?

Self: Mostly functional. Nothing broken. One wound – lightsaber, already cauterized, already bandaged. Dax’s work; Bash can tell. 

Come back to that later. 

Boomer: unconscious, bandaged.

Target: unconscious, bandaged. 

Cog: dead, with a lightsaber wound in his chest. 

Come back to that later. 

Dax: nowhere to be seen.

The shuttle: nowhere to be seen.

H1F1: nowhere to be seen. 

Knight Tai: nowhere to be seen –

_Knight Tai is dead._

His hand, Boomer’s gun, and a blaster shot –

_The Jedi traitor is dead._

But the shuttle is gone, and H1F1 is gone, and Knight Tai’s body, unlike Cog’s, is nowhere to be seen – 

The more he tries to think about this, the more his brain ties up in knots and the more his hands start shaking, which he really doesn’t have time for at this very moment. That ‘mostly functional’ assessment might have been premature. Something is definitely wrong with him, but he’s got two badly wounded brothers here, and no medic, and no shuttle, so he can’t actually afford to have anything wrong with him right now. 

Come back to this later. Come back to all this later. 

Right now, Bash picks up his radio, and doesn’t think about anything besides calling and calling and calling until he’ll find someone who answers. 

**

“We can’t tell anyone about Dax taking the shuttle,” says Boomer, later. They’re all in the tiny infirmary of the nearest small town, waiting for a Republic – Imperial – transport to come and pick them up. “We all know what he was risking every minute in the army. Now, more than ever --”

 _Jedi traitors._ The unspoken words hang in the air. Boomer breaks off, then shrugs and finishes: “He was smart to get out when he did.”

“Yeah,” says Bash, “but did he have to take my damn droid with him?”

It’s been worrying him. It’s been worrying him a lot. Dax likes H1F1 fine, everyone likes H1F1, but Dax has no idea how to fix a droid. Wires and engine grease bore him solid. If one of his scurrying little critter friends decided it wanted to make a nest in H1F1’s innards, would Dax even know enough not to let it? 

“Maybe he was thinking he’d get lonely,” says Target, and then flushes dull red, and hunkers down more into his bunk and turns half-away. “Just a thought.” 

_Are you going to get lonely out there?_

It’s a flash of his own voice, but he can’t remember where or when he said it, and for a second, he thinks, well, I’ll just search through the footage, see if I can pull it up –

But H1F1 had the footage, and H1F1’s gone. 

“I’m sure Dax will take good care of H1F1,” Boomer tells him, in their most reassuring voice. “As long as nobody knows where they are, they’ll both be safe. Probably safer than us.”

“So,” Bash says, “are we going to say the traitor killed him?” 

There’s a long silence, and then Boomer lets out a breath and says, “Yeah. Might as well. She killed Cog, so what’s one more?”

“At least she paid for that,” mutters Target, and Bash sees his own grim satisfaction at the thought of their duty discharged reflected in Boomer’s eyes. 

His hand, Boomer’s gun, and a blaster shot –

And for just a moment, the veil of satisfaction is ripped through by a profound and terrible grief, and Bash feels his hands starting to shake. He clenches his fists hard, lets the familiar ache of long-healed bones distract him from the ache in his head, takes a deep breath.

Knight Tai is dead. He killed her. He _knows_ that, except for the occasional destabilizing moments when he doesn’t. 

She was a traitor. He knows that too. Almost all of the time, he knows it. 

He wants the video footage, is what he wants. 

He wants his damn droid.

“Okay,” he says. “I guess that’s the story we’re sticking to,” and puts a deck of cards on the table in between them. “Come on – we got to do something to stop our brains turning into mush here, right? Winner buys a round, when we’re all out of here.”

**

They’re not going to have a chance to buy that round together, of course. Bash was pretty sure he knew it, even as he said it.

Boomer and Target are scheduled for a long-term stay in a medical frigate. You don’t recover from getting sliced up by a Jedi in a day. Bash, on the other hand, is a perfectly healthy asset – or so the medic on the Imperial shuttle tells him – and there’s no reason for him to hang around in sickbay, so he’s been reassigned to a unit on Onderon.

Theoretically, the war is over. Bash had been worried about what was going to happen to his brothers in peacetime, but apparently he’s been working under a fundamental misunderstanding of the definition of ‘peace,’ because it sure doesn’t look like the peaceful Empire needs soldiers any less than the embattled Republic did.

Truth be told, Bash feels like he could probably use some recovery time as well. Something is definitely wrong with him. He’s known that for weeks now. Something that means he sometimes finds himself believing two things at once, two things that absolutely can’t both be true. Something that makes his hands start shaking when he tries to think too hard about killing the traitor, Jedi Knight Tai. 

Something, maybe, like whatever it was that caused squads of his brothers to turn on each other without warning, clawing mindlessly like something out of a horror holo – and isn’t that a fun thought for a late night screaming nightmare? 

But it’s not the kind of thing that shows on the outside – at least not if you’ve got a good enough poker face, which Bash has, most of the time. And it’s absolutely not the kind of thing you tell the Kaminoans, not if you want to be the kind of clone that lives to fight another day. 

It’s the kind of thing you tell your brothers, if anyone, but he’s pretty sure Boomer and Target don’t feel any more like talking about that day than he does. 

It’s the kind of thing you tell your medic, if Dax were anywhere to be told. 

As it is, Bash is going back to battle, whether or not he’s ready. “I’d ask you to record me a farewell message,” he says to Boomer and Target, leaning on the wall in between their cots, “but I think it’s going to be a little while before I can scrounge another holocam.”

“That’s … fine,” says Target, and Bash laughs.

“Yeah, I know, you hated talking into the camera anyway.”

“If I come across one that’s scroungeable,” says Boomer, “I’ll send it your way. You take care of yourself, all right, Bash?”

“Yes, sir!” Bash salutes, then drops it. “You, too.” He hesitates, then drops his voice. “You hear from Killjoy yet?” He knows that just because Killjoy helped them out with the last round of shady medical frigate business doesn’t mean there’s a whole lot he could do from Coruscant to keep an eye out for a couple of semi-barbecued clones on ship halfway across the Core. 

Still, it would make him feel better to know that someone else is paying attention to these two particular barbecued clones besides him. Someone who, presumably, is still perfectly functional, and doesn’t occasionally wake up nights with a nightmare feeling like their mind is trying to split itself in two. 

Boomer shakes their head. “We’ll keep trying. We’ll let you know.”

“If I don’t hear from you...”

“You’ll hear from us,” says Boomer, firmly, and Bash nods, and heads to the ship that’s due to take him to his next deployment. 

**

It’s three weeks before he convinces himself it’s a good idea to make any closed-channel calls, and another two weeks after that before he can fumble together the equipment and the privacy to do so. Everything takes him ten times as long, without H1F1 to act as his fingers. 

When he does finally have everything in place, Shiri doesn’t answer. 

Yasmin eventually does, but it takes her longer than usual, and her face on the video is bland and distant. “Bash, it’s always good to hear from you, but this isn’t --”

He cuts her off. “Something’s wrong with me.”

Her eyes fly open before narrowing again. “What do you mean?”

“I’m malfunctioning.” He can’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Or maybe we’re all malfunctioning. Honestly, I don’t know, and it scares the hell out of me.”

“I’ve … heard some things,” Yasmin says, cautiously. “To be honest, I haven’t exactly been sure what to think. Sounded like an internal shitshow, to tell you the truth.”

Bash does laugh at that. “That’s sure one way to put it. Look – I don’t know that it’s safe for us to be in contact, but I need to get in touch with Ranger Luma. If you have a chance, could you ask him to get in touch with me?”

“Luma?” Yasmin’s face shutters again. “I don’t think --”

“Please,” Bash says, “just ask him. I don’t care what he’s up to, whether he’s for the Empire or against it --”

“No offense,” says Yasmin, “but I was kind of under the impression you _have_ to care.” 

Bash’s attempt at a smile comes out more as a grimace. “Yeah, well, I told you. I’ve been malfunctioning.” 

Yasmin frowns at him through the screen. “Never heard you talk about yourself like a machine before.” 

“Never felt like one before,” says Bash. “Or, I guess, never wished I was one. Machines are pretty easy to fix. Look – tell Luma to contact me if he can. I’ll send you my coordinates. I’ll, uh, I can’t honestly say I’ll be in touch. Not yet. But if I can – I’ll let you know if I can, and if I can’t --” 

“Cut the melodrama,” Yasmin snaps. It’s the most like herself she’s sounded this whole time, and Bash almost laughs again, in spite of herself. “We’ll talk soon, I just can’t now. I’ll pass the message on to Luma.”

“Thanks,” says Bash. “And, uh, sorry about the download cost that’s about to hit your data store.” 

“What?” says Yasmin, and Bash breaks the call so that he can start transferring video from the storage system he set up with Yasmin back to his personal datacom. Not all of it – that really would be unfair to Yasmin – but all the most recent videos that he’d managed to upload there, before they went out to the Unknown Regions. 

Boomer, cursing as they unpick a line of stitches. Dax, covered in gutterguppies. Knight Tai, meditating with Target. Knight Tai, leaning over the cockpit with a Cog who looks very nearly relaxed. Knight Tai, sitting back with raised eyebrows and something that’s almost a smile, while Boomer laughs and Target blushes and Bash’s voice comes from behind the camera – 

And as much and as long as he looks through the footage, he can’t see any sign of what’s coming. He can’t see any proof of what he knows is true: Knight Tai is a traitor, and she will betray them.

The documentary evidence is clear. The people in that footage live together, trust each other. The people in that footage care about each other. 

The people in that footage killed each other. 

_Did they do this to us?_ He asked somebody that once, he knows, but he can’t remember who, or why. 

The Jedi were traitors to the Republic. The Jedi made his brothers, and used them, for the Republic, which is now the Empire. The Jedi couldn’t be trusted. The Republic couldn’t be trusted. The Empire can’t be trusted. 

His brothers – his brothers, whom he loves, whom he’s always trusted above everything – his brothers, who he’s now seen attack each other mindlessly for no reason at all, can’t be trusted. 

Which means that he, himself, can’t be trusted. 

He needs something provable. He needs something reliable. 

He needs H1F1. 

**

He’s expecting a private comm.

What he gets is Dax appearing suddenly in front of him when he’s on patrol in the middle of the jungle of Onderon. 

Bash claps a hand over his own mouth to muffle his involuntary shout. It’s been only two months, but somehow he’s forgotten how damn quiet Dax can be when he’s trying. 

“I heard you wanted to see me,” Dax says quietly, and Bash can’t help it – he rushes forward and engulfs him in a barrel hug. 

Before Dax can do more than awkwardly pat him on the back, Bash takes a step back, grabs him by the shoulders, and hisses, “Where the _hell_ is my droid?”

Dax stares at him. “Your … H1F1?”

“Don’t you tell me you lost him!”

“I – what?”

“You took him,” Bash insists, though the bafflement on Dax’s face is one of the most convincing things he’s ever seen. “You took him, when you left, you took the shuttle, and you took --”

But Dax is shaking his head. “I didn’t … I didn’t take the shuttle? The shuttle was gone when I woke up. I bandaged you up and then – you don’t, uh, you don’t remember?”

Bash lets his hands fall from Dax’s shoulders. 

Dax doesn’t have H1F1. 

Dax didn’t take the shuttle, and he doesn’t have H1F1.

Which means – which means –

His hands are starting to shake again.

He takes a deep breath. He tries to keep his voice measured. “That’s, uh, the other reason I wanted to see you. Dax – I think there’s something wrong with me.”

Dax fixes him with that patented Dax thousand-yard stare, but when he speaks, his voice is surprisingly calm. “There is,” he says. “If you trust me, I can fix it.”

His brothers can’t be trusted, and Dax is one of his brothers. The Jedi can’t – couldn’t – be trusted, and Dax is the closet thing to a Jedi that the Kaminoans ever produced.

But if you can’t trust anyone, then what’s the point of any of it?

Bash nods, and Dax tells him what he has to do. 

**

Manufacturing an injury so that he can stay behind in medbay the next time his unit goes out on a mission isn’t difficult. He’s only been with this group for a month, but everybody already knows what a terrible shot he is. When he comes limping in with a blaster wound to the foot, he gets jokes, sympathetic shoulderpats, and no suspicion whatsoever. 

Then they’re all gone, except for the medic – and Dax walks in like a ghost, and tells the medic to go.

The medic leaves like a person in a daze, and Bash says, “I never wanted to ask you if you ever did that to us.” 

“I wouldn’t have,” Dax says. “Then. But. You know. Uh – I can give you anaesthesia, or I can just … tell you to go to sleep?” 

He wants to ask for anaesthesia, but that might mean supplies checked, and questions asked. “Just do it,” sighs Bash.

When he wakes up, he feels different. 

_His hand, Boomer’s gun, and a blaster shot –_

“She isn’t dead,” says Dax, hastily, as the weight of it starts to descend. “You didn’t kill her. You told me you did, but I _know_ you didn’t. I can feel her in – I think – I think you faked it? To help her escape?”

Bash spends a minute just concentrating on taking deep breaths. 

He still knows he killed her. He knows it the same way he knew until an hour ago that Jedi traitors needed to be killed. And, unlike an hour ago, he knows it was wrong – knows it with every much-broken bone in his body. She stood between him and a rancor, and he killed her. She stood between them and a war, for three years, and they were made to kill her. 

_Did they do this to us?_

But the shuttle was gone, and H1F1 was gone, and Knight Tai’s body wasn’t on the ground. 

_Are you going to get lonely out there?_

“You said – you can feel her?” he says, after a moment.

“Yeah. I can feel – um.” Dax hesitates. “Uh – you don’t happen to remember, after the rest of us were all out, she didn’t say anything … um …. Sith-y?”

“Sith-y?” says Bash, who still only has a very hazy idea of what a Sith even is. 

“Yeah, like – getting revenge on the people who did this, or --”

_I’ll make them pay for all of this._

_Do it._

“Honestly,” says Bash, “I still don’t really remember anything clearly after Target went down, but revenge sounds like a pretty good idea to me.” 

“….Right,” says Dax. “Well – your unit is probably going to be back soon, so...”

“You’re going to find her, aren’t you?”

After a moment, Dax nods.

“You know Boomer and Target are stuck in sickbay?”

“Yeah,” says Dax. “I can’t, um – there’s too many people there, but maybe after --” 

“Yeah. In case you’re out of contact for a while, I was wondering – could you leave some info about whatever you just did to me with Yasmin?”

Dax gives a faint smile at that. “I already did.” 

“Great,” says Bash. “Thanks.” He smiles and it feels, almost, genuine. It’s almost like being back on a mission. Though he doesn’t, as yet, know what that mission is – only what it isn’t. 

If he can trust himself, he’ll figure out the rest. 

“And – you know, once you find her, and she’s not alone anymore … could you ask my droid if he wants to come home?”


End file.
